The wing was modified several times, until I reached the final form together with a new pose for both the body and the head, giving the dragon almost a raptor bird look, cautious and ready to strike at the first hint of danger.

Texturing, lighting and modeling progressed together during the creation process, so that I could reach a good, final result in the shortest time possible (Fig.06).

Fig. 06

For the woman's body and the dragon I used an SSS material, set differently in two different scenes, and obtaining a double effect through the lighting, one more realistic for the skin and the other one more "painted" (Fig.07).

Fig. 07

All the metallic items were mapped with mia_material x passes, and the leaves with a Lambert in addition to Incandescence. Everything was rendered using mental ray with Final Gather active and the use of IBL. Here is an example of the exit passes (Fig.08).

Fig.08

Finally, I finalized the background, building the central statue with ZBrush and the other, more technical, elements in Maya. The light comes from the left and the material is a SSS (Fig.09).

Fig. 09

I chose to use a slightly desaturated blue as the dominant color for the composition, to create the illusion that the Mistress of Dragons is inside a sort of temple, lost in her own thoughts of conquest and enchanted by her dark visions of submissive countries controlled by her dragons (Fig.10).